Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch, which ran on NBC and then in syndication from 1989 to 2001.  The entire show can be viewed on Tubi.

This week …. it’s times for volleyball!

Episode 1.12 “Armored Car”

(Dir by Michael Ray Rhoades, originally aired on January 5th, 1990)

Another pier on the verge of collapse!

(Seriously, what was the deal with California in the 90s?  Why were all the piers on the verge of collapse?  Was California just not investing in infrastructure?)

A local businessman is holding a carnival to raise funds to save the pier!  Yay!  He’s also decided that it would be a smart idea to park an extremely heavy armored car on the edge of the pier so that people can see all the money sitting inside of it.  Hey, wait a minute.  That seems kind of dumb.  Why would anyone be that stupid?  The businessman says that the armored car is sitting on the pier so that people can have their picture taken with the money.  (It’s five dollars per picture.)  That seems like a pretty stupid promotion but, beyond that, is there a reason why it has to be done on a pier that’s on the verge of collapsing?

Needless to say, the pier does start to collapse, which leaves the armored car teetering right on the edge.  A little girl is trapped in the car so Eddie and Shauni — despite it being their off-day — jump into the back of the car and save the little girl.  But then the door slams shut and the armored car falls into the ocean below.  Eddie cracks several ribs.  Shauni declares her love for him as they wait to be rescued.

Have no fear, they are rescued.  This is one of those Baywatch episodes where the emphasis is on a bunch of people working together as a team to save not only two lives but also all the money in the armored car.  This episode celebrates first responders, many of whom seem to be playing themselves.  Most of the heroes in this episode have never been seen on the show before and will probably never be seen again but they still come together to accomplish the impossible.  If you ask David Hasselhoff, episodes like this are what Baywatch was all about.  The Hoff may have a point, though I think the red swimsuits probably had more to do with the show’s eventual popularity than the earnest initial intentions.

One person who is not working to rescue Eddie and Shauni is Jill.  Jill is on the other side of the beach, taking part in a volleyball tournament.  Her partner is Trevor, the arrogant Australian lifeguard and her motivation for playing is to defeat her ex-boyfriend Chris Barron (Jon Lindstrom).  Jill aggravates an old shoulder injury while playing but she refuses to withdraw from the tournament because defeating an ex is totally worth a serious injury that could cause her to lose her job as a lifeguard.  Needless to say, Jill and Trevor win the tournament.  There’s a lot of slow motion volley ball scenes, which would probably have been more effective if not for the weird faces that Jill made whenever she had to spike the ball.  Still, seeing as how Jill is going to get eaten by a shark in just a few more episodes, we should probably be happy that she got to have a moment of triumph.

This was an average Baywatch episode.  If I cared about Jill and Trevor, their storyline would have perhaps been more effective.  As for the armored car stuff, it would have been more effective if the reason for the car being on the pier wasn’t so dumb to begin with.

Forget it, it’s Baywatch.